Modernism and Mindfulness

What is Mindfulness really about ? 

What on Earth has it got to do with Modernism ?

These are questions that I have struggled with in the past. I have always had very stressful jobs and have had more than my share of personal issues to deal with. Not surprisingly this led me to seek a way to keep myself calm and positive when things start to get on top of me. I now realise that the majority of people could describe themselves in the same sort of terms, if not permanently then certainly at various points in their lives. I am not alone.

Now my problem was that I have never been the sort of person who had any time for New Worldly or Other Worldly ideas. I am not religious. I can only view Tai Chi as something for very slim young ladies. Meditation is for Samurai Warriors before eating their Snickers bars. I am, to say the least, very sceptical.

A couple of years ago things were really bad for me. Stress, depression and anxiety were totally ruling my life. I could feel myself sinking. I was desperate. So desperate that I took a serious look at what mindfulness was really all about. I had heard about it and the use of meditation techniques to create the sense of calm that I was after, but to be perfectly honest I remained totally sceptical. But nothing else had worked so I dug into it.

Essentially the messages that I found when reading about it and watching various videos was that it was less paranormal psychobabble and more science. Having done a lot of work professionally on the study of the Brain I found that I could relate to the scientific background to what it was trying to achieve quit easily. Because of this starting point I approached it from a purely scientific rational point of view.

For me the big problem was that I was always dwelling on things that have happened that I did not want to have happened. Everything that had gone wrong was a major crisis for me. Thinking about it constantly just made it worse. Yet there was NOTHING that I could do to change it. It had happened and that was that. What made it worse was the fact that as soon as I began to feel like this I spent ever more hours worrying about what I might be able to do in the future and what effects the event would have on the future. Often I couldn't plan anything to mitigate the situation and I felt even more helpless and worthless. I realised that most of my thinking was negative thoughts about the past and about possible future actions.

With Mindfulness I realised that actually at the vast majority of single points in time Nothing negative was actually happening to me. I was just eating, sleeping, breathing, walking just like everybody else. What I began to understand was that somehow I needed to find ways to concentrate on all of those millions of moments instead of those where I had no control at all. That is the power of Mindfulness - finding was to force yourself to think "In The Moment". It wasn't trying to "Think about Nothing" - it was deliberately trying to think about the Present moment.

So what has all of this to do with Digital Modernism ?

I have been involved in Digital editing and Design for decades now. From study of Mindfulness I realised that using your sense of vision is a good way to concentrate your mind on what you are seeing right now. By really focussing on what you see in front of you, it stops your brain from being hijacked by worries about what you have got to do in the future and what negative things have gone on in the past. 

Digital Modernism allows you to do this over quite long periods when you are putting a piece of digital artwork together. You are forced to concentrate on every detail of what you are creating. Your concentration is purely on what you are working on.

Now the key thing about the science of Mindfulness is that not only does it have an immediate effect of stopping you from worrying about things you can't control, but it also makes you use the parts of your brain that deal with more mundane functions of the brain - the managing of the messages coming from your senses to be processed in the brain. What you are feeling emotionally and physically. What you can smell and hear. Also what you can see. The longer you can place the emphasis on this, the longer you are stimulating that part of the brain rather than the problem solving areas. The more you use that part the stronger it gets and the more your mind can deal with disruptions and use the calm inducing areas that the brain has to deal with "In the Present".

And here is the result of persisting with this. I never find myself swearing at the screen when something doesn't work ; I do not suffer from road rage ; I notice when people are nice towards me ; My temper is under control ; Most of all I feel calm the majority of the time. I cannot say that none of these things happen - ever - but they are much, much less frequent and far less serious when they do.

I have more to say about Digital Modernism - particularly for those who simply want to use the outcomes of the art as a way to develop mindful calm. I will be starting to produce a number of videos over the coming weeks to demonstrate this.

Who Are The Suprematists ?

When I first came across the term "Suprematists" I had a vision of extreme right wing politically motivated activists. Even worse was the thought that they would also be involved in racism of the worst kind - Cross Burning, murdering fascists. But NO. That was not the case, thankfully.

Suprematism is the name given to a group of mostly Russian artists of the 20th Century. The interest in being supreme was merely to do with their Art. What they were interested in was developing the most "pure" form of art. For them pure art was that which was a reaction to the previous Western ideals of getting  closer to "reality" in their work. Realism was, to them, the antithesis of art. It was a distraction from the nature of expressive art. The ultimate expression of artistic supremacy was a work by the movement's founder, Kazimir Malevich, which consisted simply of a painted black square.

The nature of Suprematist Artwork was that it was abstract. It was a development of the Cubist Style but also contained influences from the Italian Futurist movement. It went further than Cubism in the sense that it abstracted even further from any hint of "realism". Instead it concentrated on basic shapes - rectangle, triangle, circle, square - and with block colors. 

Whilst the movement was essentially established by Kazimir Malevich, it was an artist who was influenced by the Suprematist style, El Lassitzki, who developed it and made it more acceptable to the mainstream Abstract movements. The style was also a big influence on Wassily Kandinski, who went on to influence the Bauhaus  and the De Stijl movements.

Art Deco

I love Art Deco. It is one of the art movements within Modernism that has been very popular for many years and still has a strong following, especially in Graphic Design circles after a full century.

When Art Deco began it was really it was almost an homage to previous Modernist traditions such as Cubism and De Stijl artists. from the beginning, however, it was not restricted to canvas art. From its early days in Paris at the start of the 1900s it became featured as a style in architecture and consumer products as much as in galleries.

One of the big reasons for Art Deco being so popular was that in its national search for a specific "American" art style, the USA sent delegates across to study art styles current across Europe. They took back elements of several styles, but were clearly influenced by Art Deco. They added elements of style from , for example, Italian Futurism and developed a streamlined version of the European style.

Once America had taken the movement on board it was inevitable that it would be taken on board by the exciting new developments in architecture - especially the growing trend of high rise "buildings as statements" such as the Chrysler Building. It was also a big influence on artists such as Le Corbusier.

Hollywood had a big role to play. Cinematic posters were amongst the most common ways for ordinary people to experience "Art". They film studios took to Art Deco in a big way.

In the "Roaring 20s", the period of of excess in style and the boom time for the US, Art Deco really flourished. It was seen in Clothing, advertising, cigarette lighters, jewelry, cars and other forms of transport,household goods such as lights, lamps, etc. It was everywhere. It had come to represent style and a sense of "feel good" exuberance.

No wonder I, like many others, still see the value in a style of art that could influence so much of everyday life, whilst bringing on such strong positive feelings.

I have tried to produce a range of modern images, produced using digital technology, to reflect that era. To see a selection visit The Digital Modernist website.

Who is The Digital Modernist ?

Who, you might be wondering is this self styled Digital Modernist ? Well there is a summary in the "About" page, but here is some of the background.

I cannot DO Art ! How do I know ? Well my Art teacher at school told me. That was aged 11.A lesson you never forget. Presumably he thought his job was to work only with those who were already artists ? Who knows ? Certainly not the student teacher who came in to do a lesson on "Pop Art". It fascinated me like none of the Classical Art the teacher had shown us week after week. Shame he had to spoil it by telling the student "Thank you - and now take that nonsense back to college and throw it in the bin !". Suffice to say that this man put me off Art for decades.

I took up photography instead. I started the hard way, with chemicals in a dark room. That taught me a lot about light and how to control it. Once digital photography came along and I got into Photoshop, a whole new world opened up for me. I could use the digital tools to create Art - firstly realistic photographs, then manipulated photographs and then blank sheet images. I realised that Art was not about using a paintbrush, but was about expressing yourself.

I started to look for inspiration from a wide range of Artworks. A pattern emerged. I could not relate to classical styles at all. They represented photography clubs with their competitions and rules and I had already understood that my desire to express myself would not be met by blindly following a set of someone else's rules. I wanted to express feelings and emotions, ideas and beliefs. I was not getting anything by simply recreating a copy of nature. Everything that I liked in Art in some way related to the Modernist period from the 1870s to the 1960s. At heart I was a Modernist

What did it mean in terms of my creativity ? Well I now wanted to break the rules. I wanted to express thoughts about what was going on around me, not static snapshots. I felt strongly about things and I wanted to somehow express my feelings. Most of all I wanted to prove that Art teacher that he was WRONG.

The first piece of Modernist Art that I did was a naive attempt to create a sense of what it means to suffer from Bi-Polar, a mental health issue that has plagued my daughter all of her adult life. I later realised that I had produced an image in the style of an Abstract Expressionist.

It is now my Mission to encourage, and free, all the people who, like me, were put off Art by a blinkered conservative so called professional. I am The Digital Modernist.